14/12/2025
😢
Dumb animals?
Absolutely not.
A small veterinary clinic in Chiangmai, Thailand, was stunned when staff opened their door one morning and found an injured stray puppy lying at the entrance. The dog was treated and quickly stabilised, just in time to save its life. But a mystery remained: how did it get there?
When the clinic checked their cameras, the footage showed a chimpanzee gently setting the puppy down in the doorway before vanishing into the street. At first, no one believed it. But after locals looked at nearby CCTV footage from other properties, they saw that the chimp had found the injured dog in the town, carried it across busy streets, before delivering it to the nearest vet.
Ape specialists believe this chimp had previously seen animals carried into the clinic and somehow connected a simple pattern: “hurt animal, human place, healing”.
It’s one thing to copy a behaviour, but it’s another to understand why it matters. That moment blurred the line between human compassion and animal instinct. Maybe empathy is something we all share.